Royal Pains: A Rogue’s Gallery of Brats, Brutes and Bad Seeds
If your view of royalty is romantic, complete with genteel ladies and gents, elegant soirees and lovely manners, you’ll never view them the same after reading Carroll’s latest book. Prepare for a shockingly intimate peek into the lives of some of the most notorious black sheep of a clutch of royal families.
Did you know that Napoleon’s sister Pauline created a scandal by ordering a gold goblet shaped to resemble her breast? That sexy Princess Margaret was caught at 15 smoking and flirting with a man twice her age? That Richard III may not have been the physically deformed and repulsive character portrayed by Shakespeare, but he became “the consummate multitasker, taking down his perceived enemies on all fronts” with considerable ruthlessness. That Queen Elizabeth’s doppelganger, and cousin, Lettice Knollys, competed with the queen for attention by emphasizing such shared features and succeeded in stealing the queen’s man. That 16th-century countess Erzsebet Bathory’s favorite bath was the blood of virgins and she devised, for her own pleasure, ingenious forms of torture.
Carroll’s leap into the pool of naughtiness is fresh, fun, revealing and, above all, proves that the wickedness of today’s ruling bad boys and girls is nothing new.
